The Mechanic
The Mechanic was a renegade Time Lord, originally a professor at the Arcanian University. He would later leave Gallifrey during the Time War and retreat to Earth and climactically become the basis for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Professor Moriarty. Biography The Mechanic was born as Lonix, and his parents are never named but it is mentioned several times that Lonix viewed them both as extremely short-sighted and rather simple by the standards of a true Time Lord. They died in mysterious circumstances, conveniently coinciding with the time that Lonix would inherit an immense enough fortune to study at the Arcanian University when he was older. He was only ten years old when they died, apparently. He was eight years old, as per tradition, when he looked into the Untempered Schism and saw time itself. It is never theorised by others what he exactly saw, but he claims that what he saw inspired him into the epiphany that the entire universe was a vast, complex machine that would never cease to operate and advance, even after its inhabitants had withered and died. He went on to study for the next fifty years of his life at the Arcanian University. Naming himself as the Mechanic on account of his immense fascination and intrigue with mechanics and other sciences, the Mechanic soon became an absolute genius in the eyes of his fellows and peers, surpassing his other classmates by a vast extent and even perfecting the perspectives of his peers on subjects of interstellar technology and quantum neurobiology. At a stunningly young age, the Mechanic became a professor himself with acclaim from Rassilon himself, and to his students he was apparently a guiding sun which gravitationally hooked his students to his insight and genius. When one student tried to create a portable black hole in his laboratory, and was destroyed by his own rudimentary creation, the Mechanic did not react and did not mourn, but instead was fascinated by the drive and intrigue his student had shown and the extraordinary statistical factors of his creation. At an unknown point in his life, after he had been professor to the Doctor and the Master both, the Mechanic left Gallifrey and explored the universe himself, fascinated by the mechanics of its existence and eager to know how deep its recesses plunged. He was apparently responsible to a vast degree for the technological and astrological advances of a series of species, which proved to be against the laws of Time Lords but the Mechanic was ignorant to this because he was intrigued by the results that his actions provided. It is implied that the Mechanic was responsible for the commencement and conclusion of seven seperate wars for the purpose of studying their outcome and long-term effect. Travelling the Universe Sontarans and Ogrons The Mechanic took to travelling as much of the universe as he could imagine for the sole purpose of experimenting with its societies. He did this with his surrogate companion that he himself had created - Cypher, a cyborg that was built with the ability to communicate as if it were a flesh and blood being with the Mechanic. They once travelled to Sontar, the home planet of the Sontarans. There, the Mechanic spent ten years actually disguised as a Sontaran under the name Skyrr, until he was abundantly familiar with the training processes and military complexities of the species. Once satisfied, the Mechanic made to leave but a Sontaran space squadron pursued him across seven systems until the commander challenged him to single combat to resolve the pursuit - the Mechanic won by wrestling him into the heart of his TARDIS, destroying him. Seeing him as the victor, the Sontarans left. Fascinated by their code of honour and the fact that they had spent the last fifty-thousand years, if not infinitely more, in one huge war with just one species, the Mechanic later provoked a war between the Sontarans and the Ogrons, intent on observing a war between the most powerful of warriors with the most relentless of mercenaries. The resulting war spanned two hundred years and the Sontarans, with better strategies and technology to boot, eventually won. Intrigued by the result, and that it had kept to just one galaxy, the Mechanic moved to pitting the Ogrons against the Ice Warriors, and the Ice Warriors won just as easily and in half the time. This experiment was a success for the Mechanic because it taught him that an army of mercenaries were ineffective in comparison with devoted warriors. The Dalek/Cyberman War When the Mechanic travelled to Skaro for the first time, it was a straightforward exploration, but he was captured by the Daleks, and was immediately brought before Davros. Davros and the Mechanic, despite never meeting previously and the Mechanic being his prisoner, they became something close to kindred spirits because the Mechanic admired Davros for being such a genius and for having a strategy to transfer his own species into a life-support system that would make them a far more dangerous warrior, and Davros was fascinated with his intellect and previous adventures. Davros, however, lost favour with the Mechanic upon discovering that he was a Time Lord and revealed that the Daleks were in a massive war with the Time Lords - the Time War. The Mechanic realized that, while he was travelling across the universe, his species was in open conflict with an evidently powerful and dangerous race led by an extremely brilliant and absolutely ruthless individual. TBC Personality The Mechanic was a Time Lord with brilliance, resourcefulness, relentlessness and drive that was matched by precious, precious few. However, he was unfortunately a cold, calculating and fundamentally analytical sociopath without scruples. In every single incarnation, the Mechanic maintained an absolutely logical personality. As a child and a teenager (By the standards of a Time Lord), the Mechanic showed early signs of extreme brilliance, becoming an exemplary student at the Arcanian University. When he looked into the Untempered Schism, the Mechanic became inspired with the concept that the entire universe was a vastly elaborate and complex machine that would never cease to operate and develop. The Mechanic was vastly intelligent and an unrivalled expert in interstitial physics, cybernetics, biology and interstellar technology. However, upon looking into the Schism, he also showed signs of becoming an absolute sociopath. The Mechanic was a master of manipulation, which he learned early as a child - even before his initiation into the Academy. He knew precisely what strategies to resort to in order to get what he wanted and had no complaints about blackmailing, threatening or extorting others into doing as he asked. However, in contrast to common speculation, the Mechanic was not a sadistic man. In fact, he did not react at all to the pain of others. He appeared to be completely emotionless and confessed that he did not feel anything, not anger, happiness, despair or even fear. Instead, the Mechanic was a logician and didn't do anything because he wanted to, but because it was logical to his plans. As a result of his extreme intelligence, the Mechanic was an exceptionally gifted strategist. He is remarked by anyone who knew him well enough to view him as an extremely dangerous opponent because he had no scruples and no known extremes in morality or ethics. While a lot of people viewed him as evil, it is more accurate and insightful to describe him as amoral. He did not view the differences between good and evil, and instead saw the intelligent and the idiotic, the resourceful and the limited, which led to him having an indifferent outlook on the universe. The Mechanic wasn't only logical but also a misanthrope: he confessed personally that he deeply preferred machines to organic life forms because, in his view, "they didn't get in the way". He felt that he was also a machine, simply with no metal mechanics involved. The only proper relationship he actually had was with his android companion Cypher (Cybernetic Physical Experimental Replacement). The Doctor describes him as 'a grandfather clock in a Time Lord's body', to which the Mechanic expressed that he would have felt flattery at such a remark. it is revealed near the later stage of his life that he suffered permanently, regardless of his regenerations, from Clock Syndrome, which means that he was obsessed maniacally with everything in his life having a certain system or order to it. This is why he was so fascinated with mechanics, because they represented an established order, and why he proceeded to create a vast network of spies and criminals under his control, so that there would be a system that he would be aware of in Victorian London. This diminished slightly as he got older, but it remained a very prominent aspect of his personality. The Mechanic, despite his emotionless exterior, did have things that fascinated him. He had a deep fascination with mechanics and technology. He also took to reading the works of classic Earth authors, and even quoted Moby Dick on certain occasions. He had a habit of listening to classical music in his spare time. The Mechanic spent a great amount of time in his laboratory, which - in his seventh incarnation - he designed to be the first place he entered when he resided in his mansion in Victorian London, so that people who saw him enter the TARDIS wouldn't see the control room and discover his identity. In his seventh incarnation, he adopted a gentle, silken English accent and seldom raised his voice even in anger. Equipment and Skills The Mechanic was a fully-fledged genius of the highest calibre. He was best known as far as skill is concerned for his innate, unmatched knowledge of universal mechanics. He was also an expert on biology, chemistry, physics, celestial cryptography and cybernetics. He was an acclaimed professor at the Arcanian University, teaching Interstitial Physics and Cybernetics as a personal preference. He was so incredibly knowledgeable and proficient in such things that he was able to create, from scratch and without a single blueprint, his own personal cybernetic organism (Cypher) which was capable of sparring with him in physical combat, play every single instrument in history, operate his Tardis and even read his mind based on his behaviour. The Mechanic's trademark device was his cane - a cane that stretched from navel to foot, made of black wood and with a silver handle shaped like planet Earth. The cane was extremely sophisticated and possessed a wide variety of functions. Aside from serving to aid it's owner's mobility, the cane changed function whenever the Mechanic twisted the handle. Its functions included a SONAR/RADAR reader, a perception filter, a homing beacon for his TARDIS, a plasma cannon, a blowtorch, a sonic disruptor (It could activate/deactivate technology), an X-ray beacon, a communicator and it could even function as a cane-sword. Apparently, it was telepathically attached to the Mechanic, which is how it correctly selects one out of apparently thousands of functions when the Mechanic wants it to. The Mechanic was a master strategist and manipulator, capable of creating vastly elaborate plans over entire planetary systems that worked faultlessly and entirely to his advantage. These plans involved the emotional and psychological capacities and extremes of his targets and involved alternatives that led to the exact same conclusion should anything go out of hand. His ability to manipulate people involved blackmail, reverse psychology, anonymity and the exploitation of personal opinions and limitations. His intelligence was such that he became the inspiration for the character of Professor Moriarty for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Despite preferring to resort to his own brilliance, the Mechanic was in perfect physical condition, possessing great speed, strength, durability and reflexes. He exercised repeatedly in his spare time and remarked that he was on a diet. He was also extremely agile and nimble, keeping ahead of others very easily and even outrunning a pack of Slitheen without becoming exhausted. He was also, in spite of his agile frame, surprisingly strong, capable of bending a metal bar into a curve. He was also a very skilled hand-to-hand fighter and apparently mastered and even perfected Sycoraxic Aikido, capable of wrestling a Sontaran and winning. He could also break a Slitheen's arm easily due to his martial arts knowledge. His most remarkable demonstration of combat skill is when he fought the Doctor at the Reichenbach Falls and narrowly won, taking them both into the waterfall. The Mechanic could speak almost every single language in existence, could read lips and was a skilled ventriloquist. In his seventh incarnation, the Mechanic was seen wielding an assortment of devices. He carried with him a revolver with spare cylinders with bastic-tipped bullets for deterring Daleks. He also took to wearing an expensive silver fob-watch, and a monocle that could read invisible ink, increase precision and even possessed ultraviolet, thermal-imaging and x-ray modifications. When he fought with the Doctor, he shed himself of every gadget bar his cane since they had agreed to only ever possess one gadget during their duel. Appearance In his first incarnation, the Mechanic appeared to be a seventeen-year-old, even though he remarked that at the time he was fifty-six. He had messy black hair and black eyes to match, with wide cheekbones and a permanent glower on his face. He normally wore Time Lord robes in this incarnation and a ring with Gallifreyan writing etched into it. His third incarnation was thin and agile, also with black hair but this time it was longer and groomed, as well as deep green eyes. He wore a black leather duster, orange tank top and jeans, along with Nike running shoes. The Mechanic wore gloves in this incarnation, which he took to wringing while they were still on his hands when he was in deep thought. In his fifth incarnation, he wore an expensive-looking brown business suit with a bow-tie and a rose in the lapel. His hair was light brown and shaggy, and his eyes were blue. He was described to have a stare harder than steel. The Mechanic, in this incarnation, took to unconsciously twirling a pencil between his fingers. In his seventh and supposedly final incarnation, the Mechanic was significantly more different to his predecessors. He looked to be in his fifties, and he was extremely tall, slender with stick-like arms which concealed a deceptively surprising amount of physical strength. He was bald, with a very high forehead and deep, sunken blue eyes. He wore a velvet smoking jacket, dark trousers and waistcoat, as well as wire-framed spectacles. He did take to wearing a black frock coat sometimes. He carried a black wooden cane that was tipped with a silver Earth. Category:Time Lords Category:Renegade Time Lords Category:Main Antagonists Category:Villains Category:Individuals